10719 The History of Jazz

Credits: 6 intermediate credits in Music

Prerequisites: none

Recommended: Introduction to Music or corresponding knowledge of music.

Authors: Yossi Mar-Haim, Dan Cahn

The course acquaints students with a unique and unusual style in the history of music. Jazz was created as the music of a minority in the US and developed over the years into an international musical language played all over the world that serves as the basis for collaboration and comradeship between musicians from different cultures. Accordingly, jazz is usually defined as an improvised, vibrant and rebellious art that has social and political messages. Despite the complexity of jazz and its many styles, the course provides students with a close view of the field. Students experience the jazz atmosphere, learn to identify and evaluate styles and performance modes, become acquainted with the lives of the great jazz musicians and composers, and hear and analyze their works. The materials include CDs and video recordings of the works discussed.

Objectives: Introduction to the history of jazz; Acquaintance with different jazz styles; Learning basic characteristic musical structures and principles; Acquaintance with the biographies of prominent figures.

Topics: The history and sources of jazz; The blues; The first twenty years: from New Orleans to Chicago; The big band era; Bebop; The fifties: cool jazz, West Coast jazz and the Third Stream; Hard bop; The sixties: modal jazz, free jazz; Fusion; New trends in jazz since the eighties: mainstream and postmodernism; Jazz outside of America: Europe and Israel.

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